There have hitherto been known various types of information processing apparatuses such as a PC (personal computer), a printer, a scanner, etc. which are used by establishing connections to a network (WAN (Wide Area Network) such as the Internet, and LAN).
IP (Internet Protocol) is a protocol widely utilized among appliances connected to the network. According to the IP system, the individual appliances identify with each other on an IP address basis in a way that assigns a unique IP address to each of the appliances.
As for an address by which a terminal apparatus can be distinguished from any other terminal on the network, a conventional IP protocol (IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4)) assigns one address to one network interface.
On the other hand, IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), which has been on a wide spread over the recent years, defines a technology by which the terminal, when connected to a router, performs communications with the router and automatically acquires an IP address. In this case also, the system operates to acquire one IP address for one network interface.
Therefore, in the case of even a multi-function terminal, for example, a multi-function image processing apparatus that synthesizes a plurality of functions as a scanner, a printer and a facsimile, according to the conventional system described above, there was one address by which a terminal apparatus can be distinguished from any other terminal on the network.
According to the conventional system, there was one IP address that can be assigned to an appliance having only one network interface in many cases. Therefore, even the multi-function terminal having the plurality of functions as, e.g., the scanner, the printer and the facsimile, is identified as just a certain single terminal by any other appliance on the network. Further, this appliance must provide all services by use of this IP address.
Accordingly, a driver software for activating the multi-function terminal such as the multi-function image processing apparatus needs complicated processes including arbitration between the respective functions as well as performance of the respective functions, and therefore a problem is that a design of the driver software requires a great number of steps because of being the multi-functions.
Moreover, the PC on the side of utilizing the multi-function terminal such as the multi-function image processing apparatus, must be installed with the driver software that is large in program capacity and complicated in operation, which causes a large load. For instance, even in a case where the multi-function terminal is utilized as only the printer, the PC must be installed with the multi-function driver software including the functions as the scanner and the PC-FAX, so that the PC has to be installed with the driver software having a heavy load. Further, as viewed from a PC's user, the user has to select at least the functions (of reading an image, printing and transmitting by FAX) executed by the multi-function image processing apparatus after booting the driver software of the multi-function image processing apparatus itself, and hence there arises such a problem that the operation becomes complicated.
According also to the-one-address-to-one-network-interface system in the prior art, it is not impossible to assign IP addresses to the respective functions as the scanner, the printer and the facsimile of the multi-function terminal, however, a network interface such as an Ethernet (trade name) card must be provided for every function, and therefore a problem is that its architecture becomes complicated and costly.